Pen and Paper
by hushedgreylily
Summary: "The way she feels in his arms… it's like she fits." Songfic, oneshot, Caskett.


**PEN AND PAPER**

**Songfic to Olly Murs' This Song Is About You, based on both how Castle dealt with their summer apart and a kind of reveal to the pair of them. Absolutely Caskett, and spoilers for anything that's aired.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything, Castle and its characters do not belong to me.**

**Sorry it's been so long guys, I've had a lot go on last year, you can check out my LJ if you want to know what.**

_This is my confessional_

_Pen and paper I'm gonna write this down._

The birds are singing outside, he thinks, as he wakes in the morning in his house in the Hamptons, sun shining unknowing across him, the sound of the waves on the beach just reaching his earshot, completely unaware of how almost everything in his life's crumbling. Right at this minute, it's falling to the ground.

He feels nauseous if he thinks about it too hard, the woman he's been devoting the last three years to, ever since he met her, asking him to leave, asking not to speak to him. They've been blessed with brilliant weather this year, so he's sure this summer should be gone before he can even think, but without Beckett, without the strange form of normality they've managed to concoct, the whole summer seems to be creeping beside him, at snail's pace, taunting him that it couldn't go any slower if it tried.

He takes up his laptop then, in the afternoon, and he's writing something he knows he'll never show another person, he'll never even admit to writing, he'll never try and publish. But somehow, somehow it's something in this situation that it feels natural to write.

_Now I curse the day that I met you_

_**Rook's hands are shaking as the eulogy seems to escape from his lips, and for a moment it's almost as if he's watching the entire situation from outside his body, he's watching a man, shorter than he'd like to pretend he is, struggling on the stand, praying that he can hold the tears back for long enough to say what he has to. Because the woman in the coffin metres away from him, she's not just some woman anymore, and she's not someone that's had a long life with everything she'd ever wanted, and she's not someone that'll be missed any more by any other human being, like at all the other funerals he's been to. She's the one woman he'll ever feel that way about, she'll always be the one that'll haunt his dreams, be almost close enough to touch on the surface of his mind, that smile forever on her face like she knows what he's thinking. He feels sick when the truth and finality of his situation hits him again… he never told her. He never got to whisper 'I love you' in her ear, he never got to hold her whilst she cried; he never got to conquer any landmarks in life with her. She would always be the woman he wishes things had happened with, but they hadn't, and they never would, not now. She was the woman he loved, and now she was always going to be the woman he never had.**_

He saves that onto his hard drive anyway, although he knows he's not going to let anyone else ever see it. It's something he might need to read again yet, something to mark the turmoil he's feeling inside. Something he hopes he will be able to look back on and be glad it's passed.

* * *

><p><em>Saying things you never thought<em>_  
>That were on my mind,<em>

Time passes, and if you didn't know everything that had happened had happened, you wouldn't guess. Beckett's back to full health, Castle's back working on her side, and they're both trying to feign some sort of relationship with Gates. The effects all this time's had on them, what this summer's done to them both, that's not something you can see, it's something in their minds. In Castle waking up in a cold sweat sometimes, from a nightmare where he's standing on a podium, reading her eulogy, as he had Rook do in his slight madness over the summer. In Beckett's guilt at feeling it was necessary to lie to him about remembering his words to her as she lay on the grass, bleeding profusely in the graveyard, about remembering the truth after everything that's gone by.

There's something different about their relationship, it's almost as if they're more restrained, and Beckett supposes that's something to do with Castle's fear still at what could have happened, how close he came to losing her, and her remembering exactly the feelings that were confessed to her in the sunlight, although she's pretending she doesn't. They're somehow more distant from one another… they don't do much talking about their feelings anymore, they walk slightly further apart, they both feel that putting a little distance between them is slightly necessary now.

They deal with a lot – they're still as capable as they always were – they got through the situation at the bank, they dealt with the sniper in New York, they even got past the Mayor being a suspect – the arguments that nearly found the end of their partnership. They're the same as they always were; they're just a little more silent. A little more reluctant to confide in one another, a little more nervous – and maybe they're nervous of the words Castle said to her, holding a dying woman in his arms, or maybe of the fact that she was almost a dying woman in those moments.

Maybe, in truth, they're terrified of the possibilities, the way the future could have been different.

_I won't lie, no I'm not ok,__  
>You were wrong, you're to blame,<em>

* * *

><p>She's in his loft one night after a case – under some guise of handing him some paperwork over, and he's busy looking for something in his bedroom that belongs to her, apparently, when she sees it. When the buzzer went and she came to the door he didn't have time to shut his laptop screen – and he's been reading the words he wrote for Rook and Nikki in their summer of silence, when he was in the Hamptons, almost in mourning, and she was recovering from everything. They're on the screen, and they're black words on white paper, and there's something that draws her to them. There's something about her that wants to hear what he has to say.<p>

_**She's the one woman he'll ever feel that way about, she'll always be the one that'll haunt his dreams, be almost close enough to touch on the surface of his mind, that smile forever on her face like she knows what he's thinking. He feels sick when the truth and finality of his situation hits him again… he never told her. He never got to whisper 'I love you' in her ear, he never got to hold her whilst she cried; he never got to conquer any landmarks in life with her. She would always be the woman he wishes things had happened with, but they hadn't, and they never would, not now. She was the woman he loved, and now she was always going to be the woman he never had.**_

_Let the truth pour out__  
>Cause I'm tired of the games<em>_  
>This is my confession<em>_  
><em>

She feels sick, that's the first thing she can think in this situation, because there's something about those words he's written… words she knows without even asking he'll never publish, words that were never supposed to be seen by another person… something that little bit too real. Something about them that feels slightly too real… they're somehow slightly too close to the way the future could have turned out, for both of them. She was slightly too close to having Castle stand over her coffin… She stills herself then, swallowing hard. She doesn't need to think like this, she doesn't need to imagine that. She knows Castle loves her, despite the lies about forgetting she's told him, that image, of his face above hers, calling out those words flashes through her mind every time she closes her eyes, every night, seconds before she goes to sleep. She's about to step away from the laptop, push the words she's just read in the box in her head where she's keeping so much these, her confusion about her feelings for him, the summer she spent wishing she could ring him, wishing she could share the truth with him, but not brave enough, the ice-cold horror that rushed through her when she had to face up to the sniper in NYC – and then she hears his footsteps behind her, and he stops short, realising what she's reading. There's no way she can shut this away now.

She turns to look at him, and for a moment they stare at one another, neither of them knowing what to say to one another, neither of them having any words to follow the typed ones she's just read.

_So here you go,__  
>Are you happy now that you broke me down<em>_?_

"Kate, I-" he starts to say something, but he trails off, looking hopelessly down at his hands, as if he doesn't want to even glance in the direction of the words on the screen.

"Castle…" she takes a deep breath, "Rick…. I remember everything." She figures where what she's just read is so personal, the inner workings of his mind, there's no excuse she can come up with for him to not have the truth anymore, "From that day of the shooting… I remember what you said to me…"

There's silence then, between them, but there's something about it that makes neither of them think it's awkward silence, it's more some form of truce between them, some form of acceptance that they both need a few minutes to look at one another, that they both need to put the truths that have just been revealed through their heads. It's Castle that speaks first, in the end, and he does it whilst taking a step closer to her.

"I'll wait for you forever…" he half-whispers, as if if he keeps the words quiet enough, he might be able to pretend this is only a dream, "But would you… could you tell me… if you're ever going to be where I am?"

The words catch in her throat then, and she doesn't know what to say for minutes, she's just staring at him, mapping every tiny line of his face with her eyes, reading everything about him over again in seconds. When she does speak, it's as if she's outside her body, like Rook was in the words she's just read, like she hadn't thought for one minute she'd ever say what she's just about to.

"I think I'm ready now." It's so quiet she can barely hear herself, and Castle considers for a moment that he's misheard her, that this is something she'll never say to him. Then she lets a small smile creep onto her lips, and that's done it. He has to take a gamble, take a risk that that was really what she had said, and he steps forward, wraps his arms around her, and his lips meet hers.

He somehow tastes better that she remembers, and she's done a lot of remembering that evening in the alley, there's something more beautiful there that she's expected, and the way she feels in his arms… it's like she _fits. _For a moment she never wants their lips to come apart, she never wants him to take his arms away; she never wants this to end. And then he opens his mouth, and his tongue is duelling hers, and she can't form another coherent thought. She can't make sense of anything for those moments, and then he pulls away and he's resting his forehead against hers, and everything seems to make more sense than it ever has before. Sure, she's still got to find her mother's killer, there's so much she's got to do, there's so much she's always going to find that will be hard, but all of that's going to be ok, with Richard Castle beside her.

"I'm ready for this…" she repeats, and she's not sure she's not doing a little bit of trying to convince herself at the same time as telling him, but she doesn't think on it. This is something new, and something she's going to conquer. She's been a lot of things, throughout her life, Kate Beckett, but she's never been bad at anything. She's going to do this, and she's going to be good at this. "But I'm not going to be ready to repeat what you said to me for a long time… I will, but it's going to take a long time…"

He kisses her again, quickly and chastely, and smiles to her. "Don't worry. I'll say it enough for both of us for now… I love you, Kate…"

And she smiles then, because the last time she heard it, she didn't know if she was going to see another sunset, and somehow, despite all the complications, here's so much simpler, so much easier. So easy, in fact, that the next thing she says she says without even thinking.

"I love you too." She whispers, flushing with surprise at her own words as she hears it, "I love you too."

**Please review, I hope you liked it :)**


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